Franze Lab

Congrats, Rashmi! Well deserved!!

Congrats, Rashmi! Well deserved!!

In frog brains (orange-blue), developing axons from the eye (yellow-white) follow a specific path to reach their final destination. Along the way, they make a characteristic turn. This turning is mediated by both chemical and mechanical signals. The exact nature of this chemo-mechanical coupling is what the researchers in this study aimed to understand.

During #brain development, axons grow along precise pathways. Scientists have now discovered that tissue stiffness & chemical signalling interact with each other.

👉 mpzpm.mpg.de/news/news-de...

@fau.de @embl.org @franzelab.bsky.social

#research #neuroscience

Presenting our latest results!!

Glad to have been part of the team! Huge thanks to everyone especially @evapillai.bsky.social @niklasgampl.bsky.social and @franzelab.bsky.social !!!

#xenopus #mechanobiology

#Frogpower here

Thanks, Elias!

Very excited to share our latest work on the interplay between chemical and mechanical signals orchestrating brain development 🧠⚙️! This was a great team effort and I am grateful to have been a part of it!! @evapillai.bsky.social @sudimukherjee.bsky.social @franzelab.bsky.social

🚨Why can’t mammals regenerate legs or arms like frog tadpoles or salamanders?
Our preprint tackles (part of) this BIG question with surprising findings about oxygen sensing
🔗 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Happy New Year, everyone! 🎉
🐭 vs 🐸 #evodevo #regenerative #cellbio 🧵👇

I'd like to thank everyone who contributed to this tour de force, especially Eva and Sudi, our collaborators for their input (Christine Holt, @ben-fabry.bsky.social , @kevinchalut.bsky.social and many others), and our funders @erc.europa.eu @humboldt-foundation.de @dfg.de @wellcometrust.bsky.social

Accurate brain wiring is mechanochemical!
Environmental stiffness shapes chemical cues, and Piezo 1 tunes tissue mechanics via adhesions, controlling the expression of guidance cues in axon pathfinding.

Long-range chemical signalling in vivo is regulated by mechanical signals!

Building on our ex vivo results, we stiffened a local brain region – using sustained compression. This significantly increased Sema3A expression, showing that tissue mechanics instruct chemical guidance cues in vivo.

Is stiffness alone enough to change chemical guidance cues? Embedding soft brain regions in stiff 3D gels incresed levels of chemical guidance cues (using #HCRimaging) compared with soft 3D gels.

Lower N-cadherin and NCAM1 levels result in softer brains AND a decrease in Sema3A. Changing tissue stiffness seems to be enough to alter chemical guidance cue expression.

How does Piezo1 regulate brain #stiffness? Softening is not due to fewer cells, softer cells, or cytoskeletal changes. What changes is cell-cell #adhesion! Reducing Piezo1 decreases N-cadherin and NCAM1 (two major adhesion proteins).

Piezo1 regulates the mechanical landscape of the brain. Depleting it results in softer brain tissue (which isn’t just a consequence of decreasing chemical guidance cues).

Downregulating Piezo1 in the developing brain strongly reduces the expression of long-range chemical guidance cues, such as Semaphorin 3A (Sema3A) and Slit 1.
Piezo 1 isn’t just mechanical - it shapes the chemical landscape essential for long-range axon navigation.

🧠 In the developing #Xenopus brain, retinal ganglion axons follow a precise path to the optic tectum. Reducing #Piezo1, a mechanosensitive ion channel, in axons or surrounding tissues, result in axons stalling, wandering, or misrouting.

Long-range chemical signalling in vivo is regulated by mechanical signals - Nature Materials Tissue stiffness mediated by Piezo1 is shown to regulate the expression of diffusive guidance cues in the developing Xenopus laevis brain, revealing a crosstalk between mechanical signals and long-ran...

Paper alert: Our study led by @evapillai.bsky.social and @sudimukherjee.bsky.social showing that mechanical properties of the #brain actively shape the molecular landscape during development and #axonpathfinding is finally out! www.nature.com/articles/s41... @pdncambridge.bsky.social @fau.de @MPZPM

Thanks, Thomas! I really enjoyed my stay. Lots of good discussions with great people.

You fully deserve it! Just continue your amazing research at the interface of physical and life sciences. very much looking forward to future breakthroughs coming from your lab! Congrats, Elias!

Congrats, Eva!

Environmental stiffness regulates neuronal maturation via Piezo1-mediated transthyretin activity - Nature Communications How the environment regulates neuronal maturation during brain development is poorly understood. Here, Kreysing et al. identify brain stiffness as a key factor and determine a mechanotransduction path...

Environmental stiffness regulates neuronal
maturation via Piezo1-mediated transthyretin activity.

My main postdoc paper is finally online!

Thanks to all the co-authors, the entire Franze lab and the Káradóttir lab.
@franzelab.bsky.social

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Great lab, highly recommended! And, even if I may be a bit biased, also the environment is pretty cool. #mechanobiology @mpi-scienceoflight.bsky.social (MPZPM)

If you're interested in a fully funded PhD position in an amazing lab in the UK working at the interface of life and physical sciences, go for it! Warwick offers a vibrant scientific environment with a strong biophysics community. And Eva is just a great scientist and person!

Thank you Dionn Hargreaves, Sarah Woolner & @dev-journal.bsky.social for highlighting our @sudimukherjee.bsky.social @franzelab.bsky.social preprint! Chuffed to see it engaged with through fresh eyes! 🙌

Interested in how mechanical & chemical signals shape tissue development? Give it a look!
🧠🐸⚙️

Thanks for picking our preprint and for this very nice prelight article!

In preprints: unpicking chemical and mechanical crosstalk for axonal pathfinding The shaping of developing tissues is often thought of in terms of the chemical gradients that influence tissue morphology, and the mechanical landscape which results in bends, kinks and folds in the t...

Thanks a lot to @dev-journal.bsky.social and the Woolner lab for highlighting our recent preprint investigating how long-range chemical signals are regulated by tissue mechanics. journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

Excited to announce the Molecular Biology of Archaea (MBoA) 2026!

Join us in Cambridge, UK, from 6–10 July 2026 for the only international meeting dedicated to Archaea.

Thanks, Victor! I really enjoyed our discussions and learned a lot. Great place, thanks a lot for the invite!

Happy to share our new publication in
@naturematerials.bsky.social
on mechanical cell competition! Great collaboration between our CAM team, Chavrier's and Doostmohammadi's. Special congrats
@luanger.bsky.social, @andreasschoenit.bsky.social, Siavash Monfared! 🎉
www.nature.com/articles/s41...